Dennis Persica

Folks:
I don't know anything more than what you see in this story. But it occurs to me that moving to the left side of the highway may have been the only thing possible at the time.
If you're in an accident and your car is already on the left side of the highway, it might make more sense to pull all the way over to the left shoulder, instead of trying to get across three lanes of traffic to get to the right shoulder.
It's been a while since I've been there, but looking at satellite pics, it looks like there's a pretty substantial shoulder on the left side of I-10 there.

newtonawlins:
The relevant language regarding George Washington is in the Constitution: "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Since he was already a citizen of the US when the Constitution was adopted, he qualified.

Actually, Art Vandelay, you need 2/3rds of both houses of Congress to get a constitutional amendment out of Congress. Democrats didn't have 2/3rds in either chamber.
And then from there, the proposed amendment goes to the states, where you need 3/4s of the states to approve.
I'm not defending Democrats here, just pointing out the process.

Thanks, Hankdashank and trixievalentine:
I've taken the line about the helmet out for the time being until I can get it clarified by LSP.
Their original release said he was not wearing a Dept of Transportation-approved helmet. They didn't specifically say he was wearing a non-approved helmet, though. So, I'm trying to get that cleared up.

bigcose:
FYI: Jean Gordon Elementary was demolished. The site is just a big fenced-in lot now.
The school was damaged by Katrina, and then a couple of years later there was a large fire in the empty building.

BeautifulDreamer:
My understanding is that the loaves known as muffuletta already existed under that name when the sandwich was created. So the name of the loaf extended to include the entire sandwich itself.

Veefox:
The study is from the Pew research center. The New York Times link I used is a link to the actual study itself, not the NYT's reporting on the study.
The NYT link was handy, so that's what I used.

I see a lot of people are asking for some factual analysis regarding the contention that minorities were disproportionately affected by the economic downturn.
So, I pass this along simply as an aid to discussion. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/26/us/20110726_pew_report.html?ref=us
I'm not vouching for its findings; I'm not a social scientist and therefore don't have the skill set to praise it or criticize it. As I said, passing it along only to help the discussion.

For brotherkhalid:
We had an error in the original story which I have now fixed. The night hours are from 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. (story originally said 8 p.m.)
So, there's the daytime clinic, run by the city, which operates 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and then there's the after-hours clinic, run by the Franciscan Missionaries, from 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. And the same after-hours clinic has 24-hour service on Saturday and Sunday.

wetinbarataria :
My understanding is that the bridge raises so that it can rotate, which is what the story says.
And as for the bridge being open to vehicles, that was based on a misunderstanding and has been corrected.

lakeview873:
If you look closely at this picture -- http://photos.nola.com/tpphotos/2011/04/tulane-avenue_0008.html -- you'll see the power lines for the buses running along the right side of the photo (if the link doesn't work, it's the 8th picture in the series).

They are two side-by-side power lines that run in the right lane of Tulane. It's hard to see if there are any power lines on the other side of the picture, where there's actually a bus in the picture, but there's a lot of clutter there that may make it hard to see them.

Another big modernization mistake, in my book, was tearing down the oaks on N. Claiborne to build the Interstate. I grew up just a few blocks from Claiborne in the '50s, so I remember how nice it looked.

Meanwhile, anybody remember electric buses? There were a few in New Orleans when I was a kid that I remember. They connected to overhead power lines the way the streetcars do.

One more point, which I throw out only for purposes of discussion since I certainly am not enough of an expert to say how valid these claims are. Some -- many -- of you may know a whole lot more about this than I do and will surely chime in. But there is a body of opinion out there that the decline of streetcars, trolleys and maybe even electric buses were the direct result of maneuvers by companies that were most likely to benefit from the increased use of gasoline, automobiles and gas-fueled buses.
Some Internet searching will turn up a lot of stuff, but as is the case with any Internet search, a lot of it will not be very reliable.

Brett:
Another taco-truck-to-fixed-location transformation was a couple of years ago in Gretna, when Taqueria Sanchez moved into a building (an old snowball outlet, I believe) on the West Bank Expressway.